Category: Sales/Marketing

The Reputation Economy; How to Optimize Your Digital Footprint in a World Where Your Reputation is Your Most Valuable Asset. The author Michael Fertik is the CEO and founder of Reputation.com the world leader in digital reputation and privacy management.

The book highlights the benefits and the negatives in the current world we live in with social media, media, and how everything we do anymore creates a digital foot print. He makes the case that your reputation is as good as cash in your wallet and you must manage your reputation and protect it. In this summary I will highlight the main points of the book and illustrate a few stories that will make you think “WOW”!

We’re in a new world of reputation, where reputations are made and lost in an instant, where everything you do will be tracked, calculated, measured, and analyzed, and where anyone can find out nearly anything about everyone else with just a click. And while there are plenty of things you can do influence the conversation and shape public perceptions, at the end of the day the best reputation management strategy is simply to earn it by bringing more value to your employer and your customers, treating others well, and being socially and environmentally responsible. If you embrace the Reputation Economy, make sure you advertise your unique skills and talents, generate enough fodder for those reputation engines we keep talking about, and carefully curate the reputation you have.

A human blink can take up to four hundred milliseconds, in that time, an average laptop computer can perform almost one billion calculations.

In the Reputation economy it is like cash, putting it up as collateral to secure your debts and to make transactions you could never otherwise make.

All data is stored and is permanent, cheap, and ubiquitous.

Twitter generates over 400 million tweets of data everyday. , the US Library of Congress is permanently storing every public tweet send on Twitter, regardless of its contents.

Everything that can be collected and aggregated will and it will be scored.

Every piece of information you provide to a computer with a click of your mouse is reduced to a number that its algorithms can manipulate. The machine means no insult, but it has no other way to represent you, its understanding is limited to math.

Computers and scoring can come from any data that you put into Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and any other media or website you use. Additionally all of your loyalty programs you are apart of at your favorite retailers.

Computers can take all of this data and create a Reputation score for you or a credibility score. In the future and in many ways already being currently used to analyze your buying habits.

Companies will soon be issuing credibility scores, which they’ll use to determine your eligibility to participate in social sharing services like car sharing, apartment sharing, and so on.

A high credibility score could be based on a squeaky clean credit, an accident free driving record and a history of always paying your bills on time.

Health and Longevity scores issued from insurers to investors and employers. These scores will be determined by your television watching habits and your fast food consumption.

A California woman was convicted of workers compensation fraud after she typed more than two hundred posts to Facebook after claiming that a wrist injury prevented her from typing at work.

Your friends and who you associate will be scored online as well. You are usually the same or similar to your friends, so who your friends are will also dictate your reputation and credibility score.

The next generation of reputation scoring will go further than ever before aggregating information about you, the joke is “We know what you did last summer” technology.

The best strategy is to carefully curate your digital footprint so that positive information will eclipse and counterbalance all the negative data that you don’t have control over.

Don’t stop believing in the power of Reputation to shape your career.

If you have searched for a job lately and have applied to a company using their automated application process, you have already been apart of algorithms determining whether or not you get the job. A lot of companies are already using basic systems to search for keywords and other attributes to determine if you would make a good employee for that company.

Some companies have used these algorithms to prevent any kind of discrimination in their hiring process. The computer doesn’t look at black or white or any other race, it just purely looks at the data to determine if you meet the qualifications, and it is all done by a computer with no human interaction, so companies are safe from biases that could occur

In many jobs your career growth is more important than your current position. Smart algorithms are starting to learn the difference between a candidate who has stagnated and a candidate who has worked their way up.

No matter what profession or industry you’re in, a good reputation can open doors that you never knew existed. But your career is far from the only are of life you can stand to profit from a good reputation.

Disrupting Education as we know it.

Your reputation score will be so disruptive to higher education because the technology is quickly developing to allow your unique reputation to become stronger signal of employability than the name on your diploma, or even whether you have a diploma at all. These signals will be less expensive than ever for employers to find.

A new thing called microcredientials are already being tested and used in various of job fields. Microcredentials can be a course, a test, or something quick that says you “know” this. This could be the future of education.

In a world where predictions about your future job performance are increasingly made by computers, your ability to demonstrate the value of your education in actual skills will far more valuable than the traditional signals of a GPA and a fancy degree. Racking up as many credentials as possible that can be digitized, quantified, and measured will be crucial to launching a successful career in any field.

In the Reputation economy a poor decision to wreck a hotel room, will be felt across many areas of your life (you’ll get a score for it, which may affect your financial scores as well)

In 1997 a study reported that half of bankruptcy filers found out that personal bankruptcy was an option from a friend or relative. A paper from the University of Pennsylvania revealed that you are more likely to file for bankruptcy if you have a friend who has declared bankruptcy. So who your friends are and your twitter followers, and who you interact with online could determine your eligibility to get a home loan.

A company by the name of Movenbank (now Moven)works somewhat like a traditional bank. They offer checking accounts and other financial products, but unlike traditional banks they are strictly online, they are pushing to replace plastic credit cards with smartphone applications Their most controversial difference is they use a reputation score to determine who gets credit. They call it Credscore. An applicant with a top CREDscore gets more exclusive offers, lower fees, and possibly even better customer service. They build the CREDscore by looking at a customers social networking accounts Linkedin, Facebook, and so on. An algorithm analyzes the data related to your job, Are you stable? Consistent with the income you declared. They have not stated whether or not it relies on the creditworthiness of you friends for your CREDscore, but it is very easy to get that information and why wouldn’t they, they know who your friends are.

A machine is making important financial decision based on your reputation and the reputation of your friends, without any interference from humans.

The major point of this book is that anything and everything you do online leaves a trail, it creates a digital footprint. Every Facebook post, every tweet, every purchase you make online, every time you use your loyalty card at your favorite retailer, every online dating site you sign up for, every LinkedIn connection you make, every pic you post online, etc. As illustrated in the book summary some companies are already using this data to allow or deny you to do business with them, in the future what will it look like when everyone is doing this. Is this a good thing? It can be. You have to control your own conversations and your own digital footprint. Be aware of what you are putting out there, be careful of what you share.

Book Title: How to Kill a Unicorn; How the Worlds hottest innovation factory builds bold ideas that make it to market. Mark Payne the founder of Fahrenheit 212 is the author of the book and provides his playbook on how he has helped major companies transform their businesses through innovation.

This book was a great read because it really is a playbook on how to take a problem or go through a systematic process that can lead a company to the right solution for break through innovations in their business or sector. I pulled out the major pieces that I found to be most insightful and beneficial in pursuing this transformation.

1. Assume transformation is necessary:

The only way transformation can occur is for everyone to realize that transformation is necessary. Assuming that transformation is necessary changes the conversation in the team from “should we transform something” to “what will we transform?”

2. Cultivate a healthy disrespect for present reality:

Consciously try to identify things in your category, consumer experience, products, and business that just are the way they are, without needing to really be that way. In most businesses you’ll find a long list of them, with transformational questions hidden inside. In an age of personalization, where there is such tremendous breadth in consumers financial means and trajectories, why do most fixed mortgages only come in fifteen and thirty year increments? When just a small segment of the population finds full strength spirits palatable, why is 98 percent of the category sold in a way that’s stronger than consumers can handle?

3. Temporarily forget what you know:

Knowledge is a potent form of competitive advantage. But there is often a razor-thin line between a knowledge base and the entrenched paradigms that have been attached to it over time and permeated innovation in your category. Knowledge is power in certain moments in the journey, but the kryptonite in others if not properly harnessed.

4. Ask yourself how likely it is that your competitors aren’t working on the same questions you are:

Picture yourself right now sitting in the room with your project team at your competitors office. Would they be working around similar questions? If so, you probably haven’t cracked the transformational questions you’ll need to get to for transformational answers. The point is not to second guess what your rivals are up to, but simply to gauge your own conviction that you’ve uncovered through transformational questions. Big thinkers find big questions exciting. So if you don’t viscerally feel that you’ve broken new ground, you probably haven’t.

5. Move the camera around the room:

Finding the big transformational change usually happens by distancing ourselves from the prevailing category context we live in every day and approaching it from a fresh angle. This doesn’t just work metaphorically; it works literally, too. Looking at your ice cream business not through the eyes of the consumer, but from the perspective of the ice cream behind the frosted freezer glass watching consumers go by (like an orphan hoping for adoption), may open a powerful new set of questions to ignite transformational innovation. If that doesn’t work, deconstruct the life cycle of an ice crystal born in the churn at the factory, or ask what the spoon would say as its bent in the act of scooping.

6. Learn to hear the thundering sound of the things that isn’t being said:

Paradigm-creep isn’t just a company phenomenon. It happens to consumers, too. They often become so accustomed to embedded characteristics and compromises that they don’t even think or talk about them. (When was the last time you got to work and said “Boy, how about gravity today?”) A great innovator needs to ask every touch point –what didn’t we hear that was interesting? In the pursuit of transformational change the what is not said is often the most telling.

Creating an inversion: An inversion is when you take the most glaring flaw or weakness in a company and flip it on its head creating a breakthrough new competitive advantage, business model, or innovation platform. An example of this would be Vitamin Water. Taking a bland boring product and using that as the base and then turning that into a dynamic, delightful, colorful, beverage. Or Zappos. Taking the headache of getting the wrong size shoe by shopping online and turning that into a better experience.

How to create an inversion:

Aim beyond small improvements in your strengths.

Be willing to have your future compete with your present.

Hunt for late mover advantage, even if you’re the incumbent. Ask this question: “If we were starting a business today, would it look anything like the way it looks now?”

Remember that the big flip never happens by accident, you have to actively look for it.

With all due respect to the importance of core competencies, don’t neglect the potency of core incompetencies.

Remember that the opportunities you’re after are probably hidden in plain sight. Many innovations are born by digging deeper beneath the surface, we often find that great inversions come about by deciding not to dig at all, just taking on things that have been right there on the surface all along.

I hope that this summary and notes gets you thinking about your business, but since I am also the self-proclaimed self-development addict. How can you apply these concepts to your own personal business, the business of you? I would love to hear how you applied these concepts to creating a breakthrough innovation for yourself.

SPIN selling was published in 1988, and at that time it was considered to be the most heavily researched book on sales ever created. The research was compiled over 12 years and 35,000 sales calls, and 1 million dollars in research.

The study was compiled from 116 factors that might play in part in sales performance. The studied was centered around the larger sale. Up until this time a lot of sales training was centered around the smaller scale. In small sales the consumer is less conscious about value. As the size of the sale increases, successful sales people must build up the perceived value of their products and services. The building of perceived value is probably the most single important selling skill in larger sales. The SPIN model is developed around this concept. The study found that the salespeople who didn’t successfully transfer handling larger sales were those who had a difficulty building the customer’s perception of value.

Four stages of a sales call:

1. Preliminaries: These are important, but have less impact on the sale than originally though in the study.

2. Investigating: Asking better questions can increase sales by more than 20 percent the study found.

3. Demonstrating Capability: As the size of the sale increases the ability to demonstrate that your solution can solve the customers problems is a must. The bigger the problem that you can help the buyer discover, the more likely you have to sale them your solution.

4. Obtaining commitment: Finally a successful sales call will end with some sort of commitment from the customer. In smaller sales it is a purchase. In larger sales it is a lot more. They are called advances. Small commitments that get you closer to the bigger sale.

SPIN SELLING:

Situation questions: Dont irritate your buyer with questions that are not relevant. Don’t overuse them because to many question can bore the buyer.

Are used more in calls which fail

Are overused by inexperienced sales people.

Needs: (In this book the author uses the term to describe the buyers wants and needs)

First sign of a need is when the buyer shows a slight discontent or dissatisfaction.

Starts with minor imperfections

Evolves into clear problems, difficulties, or dissatisfaction.

Finally becomes wants, desires, or intentions to act.

Implied Needs: Statements by the customer of problems, difficulties, and dissatisfactions.

Less successful sales people don’t differentiate between Implied and Explicit Needs, so they treat them the same way.

Very successful sales people, often without realizing they are doing so, treat Implied Needs in a very different way than Explicit Needs.

In small sales the more Implied Needs you can uncover, the greater the chances of success in selling.

Implied needs are buying signals in small sales, but not in large.

In larger sales the ability to take the Implied needs and convert them into Explicit Needs is where success occurred in the study. The purpose of your questions should be to uncover Implied Needs and to develop them into Explicit Needs.

Problem Questions: These are questions that identify problems or concerns for the buyer. Questions like: “Is this operation difficult to perform?” “Are you worried about the quality that this machine performs?” These questions explore problems, difficulties, and dissatisfaction in areas where the sellers product can help.

Problem questions are more strongly liked to sales success than situation questions are.

In smaller sales the link is very strong the more Problem questions the seller asks, the greater the chances the sale will be successful.

In larger sales, Problem questions are not strongly linked to sales success. Theres no evidence that by increasing your problem questions can increase your sales effectiveness.

If you can’t solve a problem for your customer, then there’s no basis for a sales. But if you can uncover problems you can solve, then you’re potentially providing the buyer with something useful.

Implication questions: In smaller sales, sellers can be very successful if they just know how to ask good situation and problem questions. In larger sales this is not enough, successful people need to ask a third type of question. Implication questions: EX: “How will this problem affect your future profitability?” “What effect does this reject rate have on customer satisfaction?” Implication questions take a customer problem and explore its effects or consequences.

Are strongly linked to success in larger sales

Build up customers perception of value

Are harder to ask than Situation or Problem questions.

Implication questions increase the size of the problem in the buyer’s mind.

Decision makers respond very well to Implication questions. They are the ones whose success depends on seeing beyond the immediate problem to the underlying effects and consequences.

Implications are the language of decision makers, and if you can talk their language, you’ll influence them better.

Need-Payoff questions: EX: “Would it be useful to speed this operation by 10 percent?” “If we could improve the quality of this operation, how would that help you?” In the studies, they found that top performers ask more than 10 times as many Need-Payoff questions per sale than average performers.

Are strongly linked to success in larger sales

Increase the acceptability of your solution

Are particularly effective with influencers who will present your case to the decision maker.

Need-Payoff questions have succeeded in focusing customer attention on solutions rather than problems.

Need-Payoff questions reduce objections.

These questions do two things:

They focus the customer’s attention on the solution rather than on the problem.

They get the customer telling you the benefits. EX: How do you think a faster machine would help you?”

How to use SPIN questions:

Before the sale, write down three potential problems which the buyer may have and which your products or services can solve.

Write down actual problem questions that you could ask to uncover each of the potential problems you’ve identified.

Planning Implication Questions:

Write down a potential problem the customer is likely to have

Then ask yourself what related difficulties this problem might lead to and write these down. Think of these difficulties as the implications of the problem.

For each difficulty, write down questions it suggests.

Features:

Have a positive effect on small sales.

Are neutral or un-persuasive in larger sales.

Users respond more positively to Features than do decision makers

Benefit:

Facts or characteristics of a product or service.

Shows how a feature can help a customer.

A Benefit must have a cost saving for the buyer

A Benefit is any statement that meets a need.

A Benefit has to appeal to the personal ego needs of the buyer, not to organizational or departmental needs.

A Benefit must be something which you can offer and which your competitors can’t.

A benefits gives a buyers motive.

Advantages:

Show how a product or service can be used or can help the customer.

Have a positive effect on small sales but little effect on larger sales.

Have less impact late in the selling cycle.

Focus on the problems that your product solves and on thinking up the questions that will uncover and develop these problems, is a proven successful method of selling.

Objections/hesitations:

Objection handling is much less important skill than most training makes it out to be.

Objections, contrary to common belief, are more often created by the seller than the customer.

In the average sales team, there’s usually one salesperson who receives 10 times as many objections per selling hour than another on the same team.

Skilled people receive fewer objections because they have learned objection prevention, not objection handling.

Customers are most likely to raise price objections where the seller gives lots of features. It seems that the effect of Features is to increase the customers sensitivity to price.

You will get an objection if you provide a solution before you have developed the need.

Objections too early: Customers rarely object to questions unless you have found a way to ask offensive questions. Dont do this. Most objections are to solutions that don’t fit needs. If you’re getting a lot of objections, it probably means that instead of asking questions you have been prematurely offering solutions and capabilities. Don’t talk about your solutions until you’ve asked enough questions to develop strong needs.

Objections about value: If most of the objections you receive raise doubts about the value of what you offer, then there’s a good chance that you’re not developing needs strongly enough. Typical value objections would be it’s too expensive, I don’t think its worth the trouble of changing from our existing supplier. In cases like these, customer objections tell you that you haven’t succeeded in building strong need. The solution lies in better needs development, not in objection handling. Particularly if you are getting price objections, cut down on the use of features and, instead, concentrate on asking Problem, Implication, and Need-Payoff questions.

Notes about closing:

In low value sales, given unsophisticated customers and no need to develop a containing customer relationship, closing techniques can work very effectively. With professional buyers closing techniques make you less effective and reduce your chances of getting the business.

In larger sales since it requires many steps in the sales process and may people. The close may be an advance. Which means the sales is advancing to the next step. All good sales people realize what they are looking for during each step of the sales process.

If you can convince buyers that they need what you are offering, then they will often close the sale for you.

Instead of focusing on closing the sale, look at it as, opening a relationship.

My hope is that you found a few nuggets in here that will help you be more successful in selling. This is obviously a book summary and my notes (what I highlighted in the book), so if you want more information I would encourage you to read the book. My summaries are an attempt to add value to someones life, my hope is that you did receive that value. If you did, show me, and please share with me your thoughts and takeaways.

In this book the author identifies the 20 habits managers need to break so they can have more influence in their organization and continue to grow in their organization and their career. A lot of books teach people what to do, Mr. Goldsmith takes the approach of what leaders need to stop doing.

Although this book was written for managers and leaders, I believe that the 20 principles can also be applied in your daily life as a friend, a colleague, a relative, a parent. These habits can be displayed in all of our interactions with others, and they can diminish our influence with this individuals we wish to have influence with.

Like all of my book summaries, they are quasi book summaries where I provide you with a solid overview of the book, in addition to my key takeaways from the book. I hope you enjoy the read.

The higher up you go in an organization the issues that arise for people are always behavioral. Everyone in leadership positions are usually equally as talented technically. They’re all smart. This is why behavioral issues become so important at the upper rungs of a corporate ladder.

All other things being equal, your people skills (or lack of them) become more pronounced the higher up you go.

As we advance in our careers, behavioral changes are often the only significant changes we can make.

1. Winning too much: The need to win at all costs and in all situations. When it matters, when it doesn’t, and when it’s totally besides the point.

2. Adding too much value: The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion.

4. Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasms and cutting remarks that we think make us sound sharp and witty.

5. Starting with “No,” “But,” or “However”: The overuse of these negative qualifiers which secretly say to everyone, “I’m right, You’re wrong.”

6. Telling the world how smart we are: The need to show people were smarter than they think we are.

7. Speaking when angry: Using emotional volatility as a management tool.

8. Negativity, or “let me explain why that won’t work”: The need to share our negative thoughts even when we weren’t asked.

9. Withholding information: the refusal to share information in order to maintain an advantage over others.

10. Failing to give proper recognition: The inability to praise and reward.

11. Claiming credit that we don’t deserve: The most annoying way to overestimate our contribution to any success.

12. Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture so people excuse us for it.

13. Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past; a subset of blaming everyone else.

14. Playing favorites: Failing to see that we are treating someone unfairly.

15. Refusing to express regret: The inability to take responsibility for our actions, admit we’re wrong, or recognize how our actions affect others.

Apologizing is one of the most powerful and resonant gestures in the human arsenal, almost as powerful as a declaration of love.

16. Not listening: The most passive aggressive for of disrespect for colleagues.

17. Failing to express gratitude: The most basic form of bad manners.

18. Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.

19. Passing the buck: The need to blame everyone but ourselves.

20. An excessive need to be “me”: Exalting our faults as virtues simply because they’re who we are.

7 Ways to Change these bad behaviors:

Feedback:

Feedback tells us what to change, not how to do it. But when you know what to change, you’re ready to start changing yourself and how people perceive you.

Apologizing:

Apologizing is the magic move. It shows others that you were wrong and you aren’t afraid to admit you were wrong. It opens up trust in a relationship. The best way to apologize is to do it quick and move on.

Telling the world, or Advertising:

It’s not enough to tell everyone that you want to get better, you have to declare exactly what area you plan to change. In other words, now that you’ve said you’re sorry. What are you going to do about it.

It’s a lot harder to change someones perception of your behavior than it is to change your behavior. I calculate that you have to get 100% better in order to get 10% credit for it from your coworkers.

You must constantly tell the world and your coworkers how you are getting better through your actions, your commitments, and the way you act. It takes a while for it to sink in, but if you do it consistently it eventually will. Think about the process of electing someone to office. It tasks years for a message to really resonate and then people vote. That is exactly what you have to do.

Listening

80 percent of our success in learning from other people is based on how well we listen. In other words, success or failure is determined before we do anything.

Good listeners do these three things: They think before they speak; they listen with respect; and they’re always gauging their response by asking themselves, “Is it worth it?”

Don’t say I knew it. Don’t use words no, but, or however. Eliminate any striving to impress the other person how smart or funny you are.

Thanking

Thanking works because it expresses one of our most basic emotions: gratitude. It’s a genuine emotion. If you can earn a A+ in gratitude, nothing bad will ever come of it.

Follow up

Once you master the subtle arts of apologizing, advertising, listening, and thanking, you must follow-up–relentlessly. Continue to ask people for feedback and ask them how you are doing on some of the changes you have made.

Follow up is how you measure progress. Follow up is how we remind people how were making an effort to change, and that they are helping us. Follow up is how we erase our coworkers skepticism that we can change.

Follow up is how we acknowledge to ourselves and others that getting better is an ongoing process, not a temporary religious conversion.

More than anything follow-up makes us do it.

4 Lessons the author learned around feedback:

1. Not everyone responds to executive development, at least not the way the organization desires or intends.

2. There is an enormous disconnect between understanding and doing.

3. People don’t get better without follow-up. Ongoing and consistent follow-up.

4. Becoming a better leader (or a better person) is a process, not an event.

Feed Forward

You’ve identified the interpersonal habit that’s holding you back. You’ve apologized for it. You’ve continued to advertise your intention to change. You’ve started listening more and thanking people more. You are seeking feedback and follow-up on your process of getting better in the area.

You are now ready for feed forward:

Racecar drivers are taught to look at the road, not the wall. Thats what feed forward does. It allows you to start looking forward to new changes you want to make and developing a process around that so you can continue to get better.

A study on goal achievement: Most research on goals and goal setting centers around diet and fitness for a few reasons: A) there’s a huge population of people interested in such goals. B) its easy to measure. C) with record numbers of Americans either obese or out of shape, there’s a huge (and compelling) history of failure in this area. There are five reasons people do not succeed with their diet and fitness goals. the mistakenly estimate:

Time: Its takes longer than they expected

Effort: It’s harder than they expected. It’s not worth all of the effort.

Distractions: They do not expect a “crisis” to emerge that will prevent them from staying with the program.

Rewards: After they see some improvement, they don’t get the response from others that they expected. People don’t immediately love the new and improved person they’ve become.

Maintenance: Once they hit their goal, people for get how hard it is to stay in shape. Not expecting that they’ll have to stick with the program for life, they slowly backslide or give up completely.

So any kind of goal you set out to accomplish. Health and fitness or changing a behavior, it will require lots of time, hard work, personal sacrifice, ongoing effort, and dedication to a process that is maintained over years.

Sometimes the desire for “perfect” can drive away “better.”

Things you must stop:

Stop trying to change people who don’t think they have a problem.

Stop trying to change people who are pursuing the wrong strategy for the organization.

Stop trying to change people who should not be in their job.

Stop trying to change people who think everyone else is the problem.

The Great Western disease lies in this phrase….I will be happy when…, As in I will be happy when I have this much money, or that promotion, or that family. Be happy where you are and make sure you are following your purpose.

As I stated at the beginning of this book summary. This book is based on the author and his years of coaching executive level clients to be better in their positions. However, as I have stated before, the 20 habits, the 7 steps of change, the behaviors that prevent people from hitting their goals are applicable to all of us. My advice to you is to take inventory and see where you are and create some goals of where you would like to be. Be the best you, you can be.

Whenever I read a book that is impactful to me, I like to write down my notes and highlights that I took from the book. When I do this, it allows me to read the book again, because I have to go back to the book and basically read it again, and extract my highlights from the book. You are lucky because I share these notes with you.

I recently read What Clients Love; A field guide to growing your business. This book was written by the bestselling author of Selling the Invisible Harry Beckwith.

Below, in bullet point format, are my quick notes I took from the book. I hope you enjoy. I also encourage you to find the book and read it as well, it is really that good.

Forget benchmarking. It only reveals what others do, which is rarely enough to satisfy, much less delight, todays clients.

What has made companies in our industry successful? Leads you to the old answers, which ends you to copy and refine rather than INNOVATE.

Next time you ponder strategy, ask: If I ran a competing firm, how would I beat ours?

If you were starting business from scratch, what would you do differently? Now do that.

Plan around what you can predict; what people love.

Listen more rests on a flawed assumption: It assumes people say what they think. They do not. People often say whatever will make them look good to the person asking the question. Almost no one confesses to drinking too much fudging expense reports. Thousands of men who teared up watching The Remains of The Day insist it was a silly chick film. The second flaw: listen more is the assumption that people understands themselves well enough to reveal themselves accurately.

Of all life’s mysteries, we are most mysterious to ourselves.

Life happens at the level of events, not words, the noted psychologist Alfred Adler once said. Trust Movement. Nothing else.

We overvalue research, particularly when its conclusions are expressed in quantified form.

Overconfidence bias. Whenever you are certain of something, you are wrong 15 percent of the time.

Not moving inspires more not moving. Dynamic people require a dynamic environment.

The company that waits for guarantees is doomed.

Do something, if only because doing produces learning, and learning is perhaps a service business most valuable asset.

A mission statement is a PURPOSE statement. Call it that.

A mission is your higher purpose. Visions by contrasts are selfish. Visions are your long-term aspirations for your business, not for those that you might serve. to be the best regarded, most profitable, or most reliable for example.

JFK’s vision was a man on the moon. Peace was his mission.

Avoid being NICE too much.

Like concealed priests, anonymous interviewers get more truthful answers.

We want good products, on time, from people we trust.

The economy is new, but the people are old.

We still love things that we can see and feel.

AS NOBEL winning economist Herbert Simon said, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

Speak visually, we often cannot hear words, but we notice images.

Our expectation changes our experience. Social Scientists call this expectancy theory. People experience what they expect to experience and see what they expect to see. Our challenge in marketing especially invisibles, is to shape those expectations.

Intrude in people’s lives and you risk losing them forever.

Publish anything and everything because you never know what could happen.

Only in writing do you discover what you know. Anne Beattie author.

Nothing teaches like writing.

Americans tend to mistrust academic credentials and scholarly writing and presentations. We disdain the person who speaks with too much authority. We cherish humility, even in people we suspect may be brilliant.

The clearer the communication, the more expert the communicator is looked at.

Clarity cuts through fog and conveys your value to a prospect. Clarity assures the prospect that you will not cloud the issue or confuse the sale. Clarity moves the prospect from confusion, which aggravates every persons ear of the invisible to confidence. Clarity breaks down mistrust. Clarity wins.

Prospects often tell service providers “We will get back to you.” Sometimes this means they are not in position to decide.

If you cannot describe what makes you different or excellent in 25 word or less. Fix your company.

A theory is not complete until you can explain it to the first person you meet on the street.

Edit your message until everyone understands it.

Admit a weakness. People who reveal something negative about their service win more business. Psychologists insist this can be easily explained. We assume that people who reveal a weakness are inclined to tell the truth, even when the truth can hurt them. Which means we can trust.

How the best sales people sell in order: Themselves, Their Company, Their service or product. Price.

Stories help humans understand ideas. The oldest hardwired neural pathway in the human brain is for stories.

Your audience includes four people: The TOP dog and three associates.

Remember to always present your people well, before your product. Only use slides to present a point you cannot express well.

A legendary football coach said three things can happen when you pass a football. And two are bad. The same principles applies for presentations.

Thirty Slides don’t show that you know more. It shows that you don’t have command over the material you are trying to explain.

Three points, three words each.

FAMILIARITY breeds attraction. The more you hear something, the more you like it.

When you buy a product, you purchase something tangible. When you buy a service, however, you buy the people who perform it.

You buy products based on your feelings about the product, you choose your services based on your feelings toward the providers.

To connect with your clients, make connections for them.

Two Basic principles: A service always involves more than a the exchange of something tangible for money. You must build more into a service warmth, connection, friendship, rest, status, or community. People will pay extra for a feeling of a community. Ask Starbucks.

Sociability: is necessary for human survival. Adults who isolate themselves from the world are more likely to die at comparatively young ages. We have a central dependence on others.

Whenever you try to satisfy a client, this feeling dominate the transaction, that persons need to feel important.

Efficient customer service tools tell them. My time matters more than you.

Relationships are the most powerful form of media today.

If a prospect is most interested in cost you will never be happy and always be vulnerable.

Whoever gossips to you will gossip about you.

One does what one is, one becomes what one does. Robert Musil.

We do what we say, and then we become what we do.

Your words will become your behavior. Your behavior will become your habit. And your new habit will reward you. At the end of the year, everything will be different: you, those you touch and your business.

There are times when I read a book that really changes the game. Either the information in the book does it, or the excitement I get from reading the book does it. In this case, it is both.

I have now read three books by Harry Beckwith. They are all very similar. The book Selling the Invisible which is a New York Times Business bestseller and rightfully so, is by far the best. I guess that is why it is a bestseller.

Like all of my quasi book summaries and notes. Below are my highlights from the book. My takeaways so to speak.

These notes are directly pulled from the book. Read the damn book though. If you want to change the game in sales and in marketing, read the book.

Almost three in four Americans work in service companies.

America is a service economy with a product marketing model. Services are not products, and service marketing is not product marketing.

When you buy a haircut you cannot see it before you buy it or try it out. It is a service.

Most prospects are shaking with worry. Your marketing must start; with a clear understanding of that worried soul.

Most doctors do not buy pacemakers; they buy that expert pacemaker salesperson who can go into the OR and advise on the device, procedure, and programming. Pacemaker buyers buy a service.

If you sell software, your core product is the software, but that critical part of your product is all the augmentations, the documentation, toll-free services, publications, upgrades, and support and other services. Your users are buying a service.

Faced with products just like their competitive products, today’s product marketers typically have two choices; reduce cost or add value.

This book is all for all those service marketers: the 80 percent of us who do not manufacture products and the other 20 percent who do.

In such a complex world there is nothing more powerful than simplicity.

This is a how to think book.

The core of service marketing is the service itself.

Get better reality.

Too often service, sucks.

Before you write an ad, rent a list, dash off a press release— FIX your service.

The Average American thinks he isn’t”, someone once said. Psychologists have proved it. We think we are better than we are. When researchers asked students to rate their ability to get along with others, 60 percent rated themselves in the top 10 percent. Ninety-four percent of university professors say they are doing a better job than their average colleague. Most men think they are good-looking.

Most companies think they offer great service. The chances are they are not.

Marketing is the brains of service marketing. If the brain fails, the heart soon will fail.

Stage 1 of business: meet acceptable standards

Stage 2 differentiation of your product because competitors have entered.

Stage 3 (few companies enter this stage) Go beyond what customers ever thought about. Disney. Apple. Lexus with heated seats and all of the other bells and whistles. Surprise the customer.

Create the possible service, don’t just create what the market needs and wants. Create what it could love.

People won’t tell you what you are doing wrong. Your prospects won’t tell you. Clients wont tell you, Your spouse won’t tell you. So how do you improve? ASK

Phone surveys produce more revealing information than in person surveys. On the phone people are willing to open up and give their real opinion and the information you need.

Don’t ask someone what they don’t like. People don’t want to answer because they won’t want to admit that they made a mistake.

Everyone in your company is responsible for marketing your company.

So much of what passes for brilliant insight in helping a company is reporting what everyone in that company could see, if only they could still see clearly. It’s hard to see the real scope of your business. Ask for help.

The walls in a business do more than keep the cold air out. They seem to block out clear vision of the world.

People don’t buy hamburgers from McDonald’s, they are buying an experience.

Find out what clients are really buying.

Clients are experts at knowing if they feel valued

In most professional services, you are not really selling expertise, because expertise is assumed, and because your prospect cannot intelligently evaluate your expertise anyway. Instead you are selling a relationship. And in most cases this is where you need the most work. If you’re selling a service, you’re selling a relationship.

All people crave one thing, and this is appreciation. Before you try to satisfy the client, understand and satisfy the person.

With a few exceptions, companies are not battling to share that market. They are battling to create it: to get prospects to want to use their service instead of doing NOTHING or performing the service THEMSELVES.

If you implicitly criticize your competitors, you aggravate your worst problem: the prospects doubt that anyone in your industry can provide the service and value the prospects needs. Your real competitor is often sitting across the table.

Go where the competition ain’t. It isn’t only location it could be in a vertical.

Every service company should have a director of technology who studies and regularly tells management how new technologies can be used for competitive advantage.

Be second to none in all of your technologies.

Service businesses are about relationships. Relationships are about feelings. In good ones, the feelings are good, and in bad ones, they are bad.

Work performs a social function, most people want to be in office for the social interaction.

Even if you can identify and predict people’s attitudes, it’s not that helpful, because behaviors don’t always follow attitudes.

There are two tragedies in life: One is to not get your hearts desire. The other is to get it.

Accept the limitation of planning.

Second: don’t value planning for its result. The greatest value of the plan is the process, the thinking that went in to it.

Most organizations work like groups of apes which we evolved. The alphas dictate what the group does and thinks. Alphas are not better at making decisions, they are better at taking control.

Appeal only to a prospects reason, and you may have no appeal at all.

People choose what seems most familiar. We tend to choose the one we hear the most about. even though the truth is that more people die from stomach cancer than car accidents.

This is because of human trait called attribute for getting. You have to make yourself familiar to your clients.

People don’t look to make the superiors choice, they want to avoid making a bad choice. Forget looking like the superior choice. Make yourself an excellent choice. Then eliminate anything that might make you a bad choice.

People remember the first and last impressions, but forget the middle. The rule of last impressions is reflected in dozens of ways. Consider apologies and forgiveness, for example. The last impression a person makes, by apologizing, often obscures the persons memory of the event that led to the apology.

Build quality into your service but make it less risky too.

The best thing you can do for a prospect is eliminate their fear. Offer a trial period or a test project.

Rather than hide your weakness, admit them. Tell the truth event if it hurts, it will help.

The more similar the services, the more important the differences.

You must position yourself in your prospects mind.

Your position should be singular: one simple message.

Your position must set you apart from your competitors.

You must sacrifice. You cannot be all things to all people, you must focus on one thing.

Stand for one distinctive thing that will give you a competitive advantage.

In your service, whats the hardest task? Position yourself as the expert at this task; and you’ll have lesser logic in your corner.

We as people associate and judge. We assume prettier people are smarter and more put together. But it isn’t always true. That is why it is important to say one thing you are good at, because people will associate with many.

If people see differences in products such as catsups, flour, pickles, and sugar which are all identical, then people will definitely see differences in your services.

No company can position its self as anything. You can focus on one thing, but ultimately the market and the customers put you in your position. Dont fight it.

Avis knew they couldn’t be number one. So instead they said they were number 2. And said “We try Harder”. This allowed their business to grow.

Positioning Statement:

Who are you:

What business are you in?

Whom do you serve?

What need? What are the special needs of the people you serve?

Against whom: With whom are you competing?

Whats different: What make you different from those competitors?

SO: Whats the benefit: What unique benefit does a client derive from your service?

Example: Bloomingdale’s

Bloomingdale’s

Fashion focused department stores.

trend conscious, upper middle class shoppers.

looking for high-end products

Unlike other department stores

Bloomingdale’s provides unique merchandise in a theatrical setting

make shopping entertaining

Choose a position that will reposition your competitors, then move a step back toward the middle to clinch the sale.

You are what you are.

If no prospect can describe your position, you don’t have one.

If you think you can afford not to focus, think of Sears.

No matter how skilled you are, you must focus your skills.

Timberland was struggling in the early 1980’s. The company made a good boat type shoe and priced it below the leader, Topsiders. A great product for the price, but not a good business. Then Timberland did something fairly simple. It increased its price to be well above Topsiders. Sales boomed. Dont assume logical pricing is smart pricing. Maybe your price, which makes you look like a good value, actually makes you look second-rate.

If no one complains about your price, it’s too low.

If almost everyone complains, it’s too high.

Fifteen to 20 percent of people will complain about any price. Some want a deal. Others are mistrustful and assume every price is overstated. Still others want to get the price they had in their mind when they approached you, because it’s the price they hoped for an already have budgeted in their mind. So throw out the group that will object no matter what price. Then ask: In the remaining cases how often do I encounter resistance. Resistance in 10 percent of the remaining cases for a total of 20 percent is about right. When it starts to exceed 25 percent, scale back.

Setting your price is like setting a screw. A little resistance is a good sign.

If you are the high-priced provider, most people assume you offer the best quality. If you are the low-cost provider, most people assume you deliver an acceptable product at the lowest cost, also a desirable position. But if your price in the middle, what you are saying is “We’re not the best, and neither is our price, but both our service and price are pretty good.” Not a very compelling message.

Cutting costs require little imagination.

There is nothing unique about pricing. Be unique.

What is talent worth and why is some worth so much? What can you reasonable charge?

Dont charge by the hour. Charge by the years. Pablo Picasso.

If your primary selling position is good value, you have no position. Value is not a competitive position. Value is why every service company promises. In services, value is a given. And given are not viable competitive positions.

If good value is the first thing you communicate, you won’t be effective.

if good value is your best position, improve your service.

A name like Creative Design contradicts itself. The name after all, could not be less creative.

Never choose a name that describes something that everyone expects from the service. The name will be generic, forgettable, and meaningless.

If you need a name for your service, start with your own.

A brand is more than a symbol. In the publics eye, a brand is a warranty.

Customers will buy brands sight unseen, so brand names are less expensive to sell.

As time shrinks, the importance of brands increases. And time in America is shrinking; companies have down sized their staffs and upsized the workloads of all the survivors. This people need shortcuts every waking minute. They turn to service and brand products.

Your greatest competition is not your competition. It is indifference.

Saying many things usually communicates nothing.

Give me one good reason to buy. Not Ten. You can’t sell a confused person.

People are interested in other people, and their stories.

Stereotypes: Accountants are humorless. Lawyers are greedy. Collections agencies are bullies. Doctors keep you waiting. Attack your first weakness, the thing you are known for.

37 percent of people say doctors lack a genuine interest in their patients. But patient view the relationship side as so critical, there’s even a name for it, bedside manner, they think medicine is failing as a service.

How often are you looking for the best service? The best baby sitter, the best dry cleaners, the best tax adviser? Not often. How often do you know the best when you find it? Never. How long are you willing to look for the best? (not long) Nobody is looking for the best. You aren’t. So convey that you are good and people will buy.

People notice marketing communications that refuse to strain the truth because people notice the unusual, and understatement is unusual.

People hear what they see. Let them see greatness.

People trust their eyes before they will every trust your words.

The industry that best understands the importance of visualizing the invisible offers the least visible service of all. insurance. Prudential has its Rock Of Gibraltar. Travelers as its Umbrella. Allstates has its good hands. Transamerica has its tower. Each uses a visual metaphor. Make sure people see who you are.

Restaurants are not in the food business, they are in the entrainment business. People go there for the experience.

If you are selling something complex, simplify it with a metaphor.

Of course you are committed to excellence. People don’t listen to clichés. Get rid of them.

Get to your point or you will never get to a close.

Most presenters don’t know what their point is. Tell people one thing. Why they should buy from you instead of someone else.

There is no such thing as an uninteresting subject, only an uninteresting person.

Find out what they want.

Find out what they need.

Find out who they are.

Missions statements are for you. Keep them private.

Revlon founder said this: In the factories we make perfume. In the Stores we sell hope.

People are buying happiness or the hope for it.

Dont make a client think you can do more than you can actually do.

A customers expectation is the GAP between what the customer expects and what the customer gets.

There is no such thing as too often, too grateful, too warm, or too appreciative.

Say PM and deliver AM.

To fix sales people, fix your message. If they don’t believe, it is your fault that your marketing doesn’t make them believe.

Sales is risking yourself. Nobody likes to risk themselves, but that is what sales people do daily. Rejection.

Services are human. Their successes depend on the relationships of people. People are human, frustrating, unpredictable, temperamental, often irrational, and occasionally half mad. But you can spot patterns in people. The more you can see the patterns and better understand people, the more you will succeed.

Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson have written a sales book that really challenges the status quo and gets you thinking differently about top performing sales reps. The title of the book, The Challenger Sale; Taking Control of the Customer Conversation is a book that has a lot of research that support, the “Challenger” sales person is one that has the most success in selling.

The authors researched hundreds of frontline sales managers across ninety companies around the word, asking those managers to assess three sales reps from their teams–two average performers and one star performer–along forty-four different attributes. The initial model was built on an analysis of sales reps representing every major industry, geography, and go to market model, it has now been increased to over 6,000 sales reps all over the world. The sales reps included field reps, inside sales reps, and all gender and races. The study wasn’t an examination of sales reps personality or personal strengths.

After compiling the data the authors asked the sales managers to tell them which of the individuals they submitted fell into the top 20% of their sales force as measured by performance against goal. They then categorized all the reps in the sample by performance. The Challenger Sales Rep made up 40% of all high performers studied in the research.

Of the forty-four attributes: Six of them showed up statistically significant in defining a Challenger Sales Rep:

Offers the customer unique perspectives

Has strong two-way communication skills

Knows the individual customers value drivers

Can identify economic drivers of the customers business

Is comfortable discussing money

Can pressure the customer.

Based on the unique six attributes the authors categorize them into three areas in which Challenger Sales Reps do very well. This is a major emphasis in the book.

Teach: With their unique perspective on the customers business and their ability to engage in robust two-way dialogue, Challengers are able to teach for differentiation during the sales interactions.

Tailor: Because Challengers possess as superior sense of a customers economic and value drivers, they are able to tailor for resonance, delivering the right message to the right person within the customers organization.

Take Control: Challengers are comfortable discussing money and can, when needed, press the customer a bit. In this way, the Challenger takes control of the sale.

In the study only 7 percent of all-star performers fell in the Relationship builder profile, far fewer than any other. The authors go on to provide data on this and also mention that this is not an indication of the importance of building relationships.

(CS) push customers out of their comfort zone, while the (RB) want to be accepted into it.

(RB) tends to adopt a service mentality, while (CS) will be more focused on customer value.

(CS) creates constructive tension in the sale, while (RB) tends to try to resolve or diffuse all tension, not create it.

In complex sales, Challengers absolutely dominate with more than 50% of all-star performers falling into this category. The only group that came close was the Lone Wolves, and as all the managers stated, they are hard to find and even harder to control. The (RB) fall off the map in the complex sales.

Rather you’re asking customers to change their behavior–to stop acting in one way and starting citing in another. To make that happen, however, you have to get customers to think differently about how they operate. You need to show them a new way to think about their business.

If you seek to a provide a more value based or solutions based oriented sales approach, then your ability to challenge the customers is absolutely vital for your success going forward.

From here the book goes onto tell you how to develop Challenger Sales Reps. From here forward I have included my Highlighted notes.

The thing that really sets Challenger Sales Reps apart is their ability to teach customers something new and valuable about hot to compete in their market.

Challenger’s tae control over the conversation about money and instead of providing a 10 percent discount, they bring the conversation back to value.

Just like a teacher must push its students Challenger pushes their customers.

Challenger’s don’t believe that the customers know what they need, they realize that the customers needs are simply waiting to be unlocked, either willingly or begrudgingly, through the mastery of our interrogative approach.

How customers buy:

19%: Company and brand impact

19%: Product and Service delivery

9%: Value to Price ratio

53%: Sales Experience

Only 9 percent of customer loyalty is attributable to a suppliers ability to outperform the competition on a price to value ratio.

If the customer is focused solely on the cheapest option, the chances are they will be focused on the cheapest option the next time they buy as well, so there will be no loyalty.

Power of Insight:

Fifty or so attributes were tested in a loyalty survey, seventeen of them fell into the sales experience category, each reflecting at least a marginally impact on customer loyalty. When the list was ranked by “impact” on the sale, they found seven attributes that was most important in the survey.

Rep offers unique and valuable perspectives on the market

Reps helps me navigate alternatives

Rep provides ongoing advice or consultation

Rep helps me avoid potential landmines

Rep educates me on new issues and outcomes

Supplier is easy to buy from

Supplier has widespread support across my organization.

Each of these attributes speak directly to an urgent need of the customer not to buy something, but to learn something.

The best companies don’t win through the quality of the products they deliver, but through the quality of the insights they deliver during the sales process.

The best reps don’t win the battle by providing customers information on what they know they already need, but teaching them a new way to thinking altogether.

If your reps primary goal going into a sales call is to discover the customers needs, you’ve lost the battle before you’ve begun to fight, because frankly, your customers don’t want to have that conversation

The book gets into sales process. I highlight below a few of my notes.

A great warmer question: We’ve worked with a number of companies similar to yours, and we’ve found that these three challenges come up again and again as by far the most troubling. Is this what you’re seeing too, or would you add something to the list?

In its purest form, solution selling is customization in the moment. The reps primary job shifts from discovering needs to guiding the conversation.

Challenger sales reps aren’t focused on what they are selling, but on what the person they’re speaking to is trying to accomplish.

Challengers understand that the goal is to sell a deal, not just have a good meeting, they are focused on moving ahead.

If the Rep is not willing to convince the customer that the problem is urgent, then they wont be able to convince the customer its worth solving.

Relationship Builders will do things that are not in their best interest or in their company’s best interests. For instance proactively offering a discount when the customer hasn’t even asked for one.

Sales Managers:

Coaching of sales reps is ongoing. It’s not a one-off event.

Coaching is customized to each sales rep.

Coaching is behavioral, its nt just obtaining the skill and knowledge it’s about demonstrated application of that skill and knowledge.

Decades of research into human behavior has uncovered a number of human biases that commonly hinder open thinking. The six most common are:

Practicality bias: Ideas that seem unrealistic and should be discarded

Confirmation bias: Unexplainable customer behaviors can be ignored

Exportablity bias: If it didn’t work here, it wont work anywhere.

Legacy bias: The way we’ve always done it must be best.

First conclusion bias: The first explanation offered is usually the best or only choice.

Personal bias: If I wouldn’t buy it, the customer wont either.

Close:

If your sales reps can’t say what differentiates you, why your customers should buy from you instead of your competitor, you cant teach them to value what makes you different.

Sales process:

Be memorable and not agreeable.

Build a pitch that leads to your solution, don’t lead with it.

This book ranks in my top 10 of last years books that I read. It is a great read for sales managers as well as sales reps who are looking to get better.

Hot Button Marketing “Push the Emotional Buttons that get People to Buy.” This is the ninth book I have read this year on sales and marketing. What I liked most about this book is that it really gave a lot of examples of how effective marketing works. Also, as a trainer I have been training people on finding the dominant reason a person wants to purchase something, and this book really expands on this concept and fleshes out a lot of great information regarding this subject.

These are my notes from this book (which are my highlights) I attempt not to highlight the entire book, I sometimes do it seems like.

People don’t buy products and services. They buy satisfactions of unmet needs.

People buy for the desire to look good for a boss, the desire for achievement, the desire for power and dominance.

People rarely buy products, they are buying fulfillment.

People buy for two reasons. 1. The rational Reason 2. The real reason

Hit the heart and the head will follow. Rocky Marciano This works in business to.

If you can’t sell your products in a single sentence, you really don’t have an effective selling proposition.

Consumers are usually not aware of their needs unless you show them a stimulus, that is: they aren’t aware of a need for a product unless you show them the product and how its going to affect their lives emotionally.

How does your product improve the consumers life emotionally?

You’re not marketing against consumers. You’re helping them fulfill a need.

The frustrating part is that consumers don’t need or want anything until you hit the right sales note.

People didn’t know they wanted a machine that baked bread. Why? because the store-bought stuff was pretty good. But then a bread maker was sold. People latent need for self achievement (hot button) rose to the surface. The bread makers loved the need that people have to create something.

It’s not how a consumer see him or herself in reality. Its how they see themselves as they aspire to be.

A CEO has two hot buttons. A family and a need for approval from stockholders or a board.

Nice to have —-Want to have. turn these in to must to haves.

Consumers use products to achieve the characteristics they envision for themselves.

In all countries wealth is a symbol of status. It doesn’t matter that wealth is measured in dollars, the number of cows you have, real-estate, car,. This hot button depends on age, ethnicity and background.

Values systems may differ, but the hot buttons remain the same.

Needs are nonnegotiable. You want them now. No ifs, ands, or buts. Needs are who we are or what we aspire to be. They are fundamental and necessary to all human satisfaction.

Interests are roadmaps for our needs.

Starbucks is selling community and companionship and prestige.

People who are lower on the social ladder often prefer tangible goods rather than services that only have abstract benefits. Their hot buttons are often about being smarter and getting the most that one can get for the money.

Hot button selling is all about selling to the consumers aspirations. It’s about selling to the way consumers want to be, rather that the way they are.

As a hot button marketer, you are an enabler selling products and services that enable consumers to be what they aspire to be.

Hot button research seeks to thoroughly understand the unspoken motives and beliefs held by a customers and prospects in regard to a brand, product, or service.

Here is where we go wrong: We think we know why customers want what they do. Customers usually don’t know, so how can we.

Ninety percent of a sales pitch should be you asking questions.

Engage the five senses as much as you can in any sell.

#1: Hot Button, The desire for control:

Control is one of the strongest Hot buttons. People want to make their life better. Loss of control is synonymous with a fear of the unknown.People want control over finances, health, safety and health over loved ones, our own acquisitions, our jobs, our self-respect and the respect of others.The longer people wait of for something, the less control they have (or perceive they have) over it.Control over ones destiny is what drives the at home business phenomenon.How many times have you heard this: Would you bu willing to cut out a pack of cigarettes or s ingle dinner out each week to be able to afford this home or car. Reducing a financial picture to the lowest denominator is a great sales technique. People want to feel like they can control their finances. This makes it seem like they can.Companies like control as well. They prefer to stay with suppliers they can trust rather than shopping around. They feel like they are in control.

#2 Hot Button, I’m better than you:

It is a reflection of your consumers desire to belong or fit in.The desire for higher status is universal across all people and cultures.People are willing to pay dearly to enhance themselves in the eye of their peers.Vodka is neutral and tasteless. Yet research sows that consumers–especially in lower-income areas will go for the name brand in spite of high price.Cost is an essential part of the prestige factor. The more expensive the better.People wont admit that they buy a product on status appeal. As with most hot buttons, consumers aren’t aware that they are buying products based on snob appeal.

#3 Hot button, The excitement of discovery

Discovery is something learn or found–it includes both the new and unexpected.

#4 Hot button, Revaluers

Revaluers are a segment of the market that is self motivated, self-directed, and self focused.Don’t sell to them, Allow revaluers to make their own purchasing decisions.Revaluers are a mixture of regret and anticipation.Revaluing hot button is responsible for the rise in health and beauty care products.Revaluers are more into self enjoyment rather than self achievement.Theres a new kind of store in town. A health food store. Where you get to pay twice as much for the same products they can find in a super market.Revaluers focus more on the experience of buying a product rather than the products. Whole Foods is an experience.

#5 Hot button, Family Values:

The hottest of hot buttonsDisney World and the entire Disney brand sells family valuesaccording to the book Why they Buy, by Robert Settle and Pamela Alreck, only one in twenty families fits the bill of a single marriage, two parent, two children household.Family Values are the key to selling houses.Children affect over 60 percent of the families market purchases. The trick is to find which 60 percent they do impact.Kids look up to older kids. To be like the big kids is an essential kid like desire.Smoking cessation programs sometimes include kids at introductory meetings because research has shown that kids are the biggest motivators to get prints to stop smoking.

#6 Hot button, The desire to Belong

People are social animals. Emotional connections are critical.We all long to be accepted. This need to belong is all wrapped up in our sense of personal and physiological well-being and our sense of personal worth.Athletes when they retire never talk about their accolades that they will miss. It is always about the camaraderie in the locker room that they will miss. Being with the others.The strongest affinity associations is based on age.People will belong to clubs or organizations to fill this need. They will wear certain decals or logos for this reason. To belong.

#7 Hot Button, Fun is its own reward

We all have a desire to laugh and have fun, it is universal.Newspapers offer comic strips because people have a desire to laugh and to be entertained.People have a fear of boredom. People want to be stimulated.Most sales are made when the sales people take the clients out. The feeling people get when they have fun is more important than the product. People want to have fun.More deal are done on the golf course than in the boardroom.

#8 Hot button, Poverty of Time

Consumers have more time than ever before, but they tend to use all the time they have.Geicos commercial give us 15 minutes and we can save you money was huge for them. All you need is 15 minutes to save cash. People will spend 15 minutes to save money.Saving time is one of the biggest motivators for men and women ages 25-45. Especially women of child-bearing years.Humans are the only animals that will procrastinate. A cat won’t look at a mouse and say I’ll annoy you later” They do things as they come up.

#9 Hot button, The need to get the best that can be got

This is not only luxury, it is as people move up their tastes change as well.Coveting the goods of your neighbors used to be hot. Now with reality television and marketing, people covet what the rich and famous have.Harley Davidson motorcycles have a tendency to breakdown, but people still covet them. Same as jaguars.People get an emotional high out of buying the quintessential product. Sometimes the product itself is not that great, they enjoy the buying of it though.Self satisfaction is most important to this person since it fulfills a private dream and the reward is inner gratification.The best that can be got is beyond money, beyond power, it is a feel good thing.

#10 Hot Button, Self Achievement

Self achievement is a major goal for people. Find out what the deepest desire for your product is.Business psychologists know that as adults we seek praises from our bosses as much as we seek a good paycheck.People always want to become better.Feeling good is the heart of success. It’s the ultimate in self achievement and success.Feeling Good is the ultimate psychological need of any human being.The strongest word in the human language is a personas name. The second strongest is you.Personal growth is important to everyone. You just have to find out what that is.

#11 Hot Button, Sex, Love, And Romance

Ads focused on primal instincts works faster especially for men.The desire to love and to be loved is a strong hot buttonSexual interest and romantic interest are two of the most basic emotions.Sex can be explicit or implied. Men want explicit and women want more subtle images.

#12 Hot button, The nurturing response

Make Mom and Dad the hero not the productThis hot button is about the need to give care, comfort, growth, and support to others.Nurturing is an innate, instinctive emotional response in most of us.Good will industries is a great example. People want to feel like they are giving back to poor people. However, Goodwill industries is a for profit company. But they use the nurturing appeal well in their marketing.Girl Scout cookies plays to this hot button.Michelin tires and the baby sitting in a tire. Why wouldn’t you buy a Michelin tire to protect your child.

#13 Hot button, Reinventing Oneself

Reinvention can happen at almost any age.Most often people don’t change unless thy are uncomfortable.Dissatisfaction with who people think they are, their role in life, or economic dissatisfaction forces people to take inventory of themselves. They want to fix it.

#14 Hot Button, Make me smarter

Half of knowledge is knowing where to find it.Knowledge is an innate desire for humans.People want to think they are smartPeople want to know more than their peers, neighbors, and friends,Knowledge brings a feeling of empowerment and enables consumers to make better buying decisions.

Does your product do one of these things for people? How many of these does your product do for your customer?

Personal Power and positional powerWealth is equated with power.In middle management you sell by whats in it for the middle manager (secondarily the company). It could be a promotion, more money, or an in to more power. It’s up to the sales person to make the middle managers look goodMiddle managers tend to buy things that increase their personal dominance and may help them look good to higher-ups. Upper management usually wants products that are good for the company, because in their minds they are the company.

#16 Hot Button, Wish Fulfillment

Find out what your prospects want and how to fit that into their dreams. Help them get what attainable.The advertising industry exploits wish-fulfillment by suggesting an association of their product with a specific desire (good health, attractiveness, or power)Sell the results of the dream not the dream itself.

The most common wishes are for friends, happiness, health, marriage, money, success, self-improvement, and to help other people. More men than women wanted sex and power. More women wanted happiness, a better appearance, and greater health.

Some of the hot buttons, like status, nurturing, and dominance, are primal and are shared with our cousins in the animal world. Some are distinctly human, such as control and self achievement. Most of our physical needs are met, but not our psychological needs. As humans our minds and emotions are the most difficult to discern. Good sales people get past the facades and break down the psychological wants and needs.

If you are in sales or marketing I would encourage you to read this book.

Hot Button Marketing (Push the emotional buttons that get people to buy); author Barry Feig